Blackhawk wrote:That's good. I haven't actually played in at least a year, but I and the kids each have copies, and I wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to buy three more just to get updates. if I can just 'sidegrade' them, though, that's fine.

What is the state of the Windows version anyway? The last time I tried it it was way, way behind the java version in regards to features.

The main thing that the Windows 10 version doesn't have now is the recipes or the parrots. It has the new concrete and terracotta blocks though. It also finally has all the gamerules implemented, which is why I'm playing it now. I get traumatized when I lose all my stuff so I always want keepinventory on.

The Better Together patch (the one that adds cross platform) will be launched in August. At that time, the Cross Platform version will also have recipes and presumably parrots, making it feature complete with the PC edition. The PC edition will be renamed the Java edition which is what people call it anyway. Mojang is working on Java version 1.13 but I haven't found what's planned to be in it.

Anyone still playing this? is there still an official OO MC server going?

yup, i play this fairly regularly on the weekends. i can only have one server going at a time, so it's usually one of my nephew's worlds that's up. i could reduce that to a several hour window (12-3pm PST, about) on Saturday afternoons since that's about the only time they're allowed to play - along with the occasional Sunday at that timeslot, i guess. i could put an OO server up for the rest of the week. if i can get a few people into that idea, i'll do it. i've had people here in the past say they were interested, but there were almost no logins at all.

My 8 and 10 year old girls are obsessed, but they often prefer to watch DanTDM and stampy over playing. I would not inflict them on anyone as they love to grief.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. - Nixon"I don't stand by anything." - Trump“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867

My 8 year old plays, and the Wonder Twins just sit and watch her. They would do that for hours, if I let them. And if they're not actually playing Minecraft, they're LARP'ing Minecraft. Or building Minecraft legos. Or reading Minecraft books. Or talking about Minecraft. The other day, I came upstairs and Little B 8.11 had Minecraft "name tags" (names of different creatures and such) taped all over her door, and she was requiring us all to wear one around the house at all times.

My kids have kind of grown out of it, 10 and 12, but my 10 year old has expressed some interest in playing. I'm feeling a little nostalgic too. I ran a heavily modded OO MC server via the 'other' MC thread a few years ago. One of our main players passed away and we kind of all lost the heart to play. Nostalgia and my daughter are making me get into it again.

My son and I were talking about this a bit over the last few weeks. He's been wanting to know if OO had a Minecraft server or if I would be willing to launch one. Its pretty tempting. I've definitely been getting the itch lately.

I started a local one. Took me QUITE awhile to get familiar with all of it again. It hasn't exactly gotten easier in the years since we played. The problem is there's also not a lot to do in the game. Not that there ever was I guess, but without a core group of regulars, I think we'd all lose the heart quickly.

I ran many different variations on this back in the day as you know, and McBain was the core of that really, drawing people in. RIP.

I started playing a new modpack that's just came out this weekend. Its called SevTech: Ages. (available on FTB/Twitch/Curse or ATLauncher)

Its a custom pack made for a streamer (Sevadus) and focuses on progression style of play. You basically start off in a stone age primitive state and have to work your way up unlocking tech and mods as you go. It even hides ores for metals and stuff until you discover what they are. Its very much quest/accomplishment driven and has a ton of content. Supposedly there are new mobs that appear as you advance as well.

I'm having a ton of fun playing this. Plus, it looks pretty good with the shaders I installed! This is the first time I have tried using shaders and they really make everything pop and improve water and weather effects to an amazing degree. The pack already includes mods that really change up the animations and bends in the models to the point that spiders have triggered some people's arachnophobia (LOL). It also has a better foliage mod that really improves the vegetation a ton. (oh - and lots of fish and coral underwater and such)

Its definitely got me hooked on Minecraft anew. 8/8 tentacles. Give it a try (but beware of piranha and sharks).

It would appear FTB is not listing the SevTech Ages modpack, unless I am missing something. I see it on CurseForge and ATL but I have thus far only ever used FTB (Direwolf2.x). Any recommendation between Curse and ATL? Are they relatively "safe" or is it "use at your own risk"?

FTB went to Curse[Forge], Curse merged with Twitch, Twitch was bought by Amazon. So.. I'd probably use the Twitch app/launcher(which has all of the FTB packs.) Just go into the mods tab and select Minecraft and then search for the pack. If you're not seeing the SevTech modpack, make sure you are browsing all the packs, not just the official ones. Note - I don't think that FTB is actually owned by anybody else - just that the packs are now published to Twitch launcher.

If you want to try shaders (Highly recommended) - you will need to download Optifine and drop it in your mods folder for that profile. I think there is also a way to edit the profile to add it in. But, I haven't dug that deep. Once you have Optifine: you would go to HERE or HERE and pick a shader file which would go in the Shaders folder of your modpack profile. There are many to choose from. I currently have used SEUS (Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders) or Chocapic13's Shaders. IMO SEUS has better weather and foliage (grass and flowers that are thicker and wave in the wind), but I sometimes like the more transparent underwater of Chocapic's.

Note: Once you have the shaders in - you will have to go under video settings in your game to find the button to bring up the menu to chose between shaders you have installed. It also takes a couple of minutes to load/reload shaders - so don't assume that your PC has locked.
Also note - you can have shaders in addition to resource packs (textures). I am using the faithful 32x or 64 textures that I installed through Twitch in the Resource Packs tab of the SevTech profile.

Thanks Cylus. I was looking here https://www.feed-the-beast.com/modpacks and not seeing it but it does appear that when you actually select a pack like DIrewolf for instance you get the same TwitchApp page. I will take a deeper look tonight.

I started a local one. Took me QUITE awhile to get familiar with all of it again. It hasn't exactly gotten easier in the years since we played. The problem is there's also not a lot to do in the game. Not that there ever was I guess, but without a core group of regulars, I think we'd all lose the heart quickly.

I ran many different variations on this back in the day as you know, and McBain was the core of that really, drawing people in. RIP.

i would be a regular. this game is kinda sorta a form of therapy to me, lol. i keep coming back to it.

Four hours later and I still cannot get the SevTech modpack to run. I assume there is some archaic command-line edit that will get this to work but I no longer have the intestinal fortitude for having to use the Necromonicon to get a game up and running.

Four hours later and I still cannot get the SevTech modpack to run. I assume there is some archaic command-line edit that will get this to work but I no longer have the intestinal fortitude for having to use the Necromonicon to get a game up and running.

I already had a vanilla install of Minecraft (Java) on my machine, as I had planned to fire up DireWolf again but never got around to loading the modpack. I also had an install of the Windows Minecraft. I installed the TwitchApp and chose the SevTech modpack, it found my current install and did some gyrations. I can launch the game in vanilla but when I try running the modpack the launcher starts loading all of the resources and eventually crashes with an out of memory error. I am running 16GB in my machine so I know I have enough overall but I am guessing I need to assign more to Minecraft through the command-line or something. I tried uninstalling the TwitchApp and both copies of Minecraft and re-installing everything directly from the Twitch launcher but still crashed, I tried a few tips from the interwebs, still crashed. I might try removing everything one more time and trying the ATLauncher...maybe.

No command line magic is required. I think you may be making it harder than it needs to be. The pack needs 8GB to run (it may be less now that 3.0.3 tweaked some stuff). The shaders will mostly affect video RAM if you're using them. I think the default profile in Twitch will set it for 8GB. There is a profile config option and also a config in the actual MC launcher that runs that will let you use a GUI.

You can see the memory limit as it loads - it shows you how much (peak) of the available RAM has been used as it hits each phase. It runs without crashes for me with both a texture pack and shaders on 8GB of RAM.

I'll be on the OO DISCORD if I am playing this afternoon/evening - if you'd like me to walk you through it.

FWIW - I am about to move on to Age1. I used a totem dance last night to grow a sacred redwood and also to transform 4 cows into the ancient Buffalo. All I have to do now is to breed the buffalo a couple of generations to build up enough that I can hunt some for the amount of hides and teeth that I need to unlock the final stuff in this age. I also traded bone meal for apple seeds and now am getting enough apples that I may be able to tame some horses. I have many in the plains nearby (partially why I chose the spot). Then I can actually use them to run my grinding mill, chopper and maybe even pull a plow. At the very least, I'll be able to use one to pull the carts I made.

The hardest part of moving to the next age will be killing enough mobs in the dark lands to get the gem that I need. I don't know if I'll be able to do the optional boss fight that opens up archery early. But I may have to try that to be able to tackle the dark lands mobs.

BTW - I'm glad I made a few strainers so I could set them up for fish traps and for materials. I got some shark teeth last night and that was a way easier way to go than actually hunting sharks at this point.

I installed a couple of other modpacks just to test, Direwolf20 and World of Dragons, and both work fine through the TwitchApp as well as just running the game in vanilla. Something about the SevTech Ages modpack doesn't like my setup. I did not attempt to load any shaders just the default SevTech mod, the memory "meter" shows as 2371MB for all 3 modpacks, Direwolf and World of Dragons stayed "green" the entire time, SevTech eventually moves it to nearly max and then just sits there doing nothing visible for 20 minutes before crashing with an out of memory error. The default setup appears to be using an argument that sets memory to 3072 (3Gig) for all modpacks.

I installed a couple of other modpacks just to test, Direwolf20 and World of Dragons, and both work fine through the TwitchApp as well as just running the game in vanilla. Something about the SevTech Ages modpack doesn't like my setup. I did not attempt to load any shaders just the default SevTech mod, the memory "meter" shows as 2371MB for all 3 modpacks, Direwolf and World of Dragons stayed "green" the entire time, SevTech eventually moves it to nearly max and then just sits there doing nothing visible for 20 minutes before crashing with an out of memory error. The default setup appears to be using an argument that sets memory to 3072 (3Gig) for all modpacks.

You can up the amount of memory available for Minecraft via the Twitch App. Go to 'Settings', then 'Minecraft', and if you scroll down a bit you'll see 'Maximum Memory Allocation'. Just up that by as much as you want and it should get it working.

I just dug around a bit in the TwitchApp settings and noticed there is a section for Minecraft and a slider for memory usage. I moved the slider up to 6Gig and ran SevTech again and it now loads. The memory usage while loading topped out at about 4.5Gig so the default out-of-the-box setting of 3G was obviously not enough.

i think make sure you are running the 64-bit edition of java too. And the 'windows 10' edition can't run mods, so make sure thats not the issue too.

I've been running a home server for a few weeks. I'm not using any loaders or anything. the most i had to do was look up the start up bat commands to ensure it was running in 64-bit mode and had tons of ram available. other than that its just a matter of putting mods in the mods folder on both the server and the client.

in the old days you had to start up certain mods in a specific order, and then you had to shut down the server and manually edit .json files to fix block code IDs. it would take hours to get it to boot with no conflicts. I havent had to redo anything with the current versions.

This new mod looks interesting. is it compatible with buildcraft and tinkers construct and that stuff? We're running Millenaire too, but not sure its worth it.

It took several hours of exploring and work - but I managed to find a jungle and capture two rare parrots. I had to make separate trips since I had a problem getting two to follow me. I got them home and did the ceremony to turn them into bald eagles! Now I just have to breed a few so I can get feathers and bones to make an Eagle Bone Whistle.

Edit: OK - Made the whistle and after 6 failed attempts, managed to summon the boss. I (purposefully) had a bunker nearby where I had been hunting shadow monsters. He was fairly easy to defeat once I reached it. Notes: I had wolf pelt armor and double health from good nutrition (90+% in every food type).

Summoning Tips:

Spoiler:

The challenge is generating enough music before the timer expires. I made a Haste III totem (5 horses) and put a couple of drums about 4 blocks away on opposite ends. I put 4 blocks around it with chimes hanging to generate music in the wind). Then I put on the jingle dress to generate music with my hasted movement. I had the Eagle Whistle, and Empowered Flute, and the Rattle on my hot bar. After initiating the summon (chime=>whistle), I ran back and forth between the drums alternating between the 3 instruments on my hotbar and hitting the drums as I turned around and ran back. Phew!

Yay - I have his magic bow and have unlocked arrows/archery! I also finished my last two heater/melter items (I was waiting until I tried the boss battle.) And I have finally advanced to Age 1 - Tinker's Construct unlocked.

I played the SevTech:Ages mod pack only a few hours this weekend. I'm now in Age 1, which is roughly Bronze Age. I have prospected and mined both tin and copper and have made bronze alloy armor. I need to prospect more to find a coal deposit if I want to unlock much more tech. I have also made a portal into the hunting dimension and made a brief foray. It may be better if I built a fighting structure/farm/traps and some totems around the portal on the other end to give me fighting buffs (strength, resist and haste) and night vision. I also have learned that you can change the mob spawns by crafting some sort of moss thingy. I have the required vines thanks to my jungle trips. I guess I should also make a luck totem to get better drops if I'm going to the trouble to go hunting. Its on hold for now until I specifically need to farm some sort of mob drops.

In other areas - I need to make aqueducts and setup farming on a larger scale. The problem is that I can't move/create water source blocks at this point and I have no source anywhere nearby that is at a sufficient height. Its all at sea level. I watched a video tutorial on the aqueducts and they seem pretty cool. If I start again, I will look for an area with some sort of waterfall or pond that will meet this need. I may have to move my base if I find a good candidate area. I'm sure that I will need moving water in aqueducts for some sort of water wheel power in the near future.

Okay this is driving me insane. If I accidentally place an item, or craft a recipe that leaves a component behind, on a crafting device that holds more than one at a time, the grill, work stump MK2, grinder, I cannot retrieve the item unless I breakdown the entire device. For example when crafting an item that requires the bladder filled with water, once complete the water is extracted and the empty bladder remains, I cannot retrieve the bladder unless I destroy the work stump. What am I missing??

Hmm - I've not run into an issue about crafting with the bladders since I don't use the work stump. Though I have had sticks left behind when crafting certain recipes or if I place to many of something in one of the slots when crafting multiples. I have been able to remove them by right-clicking with an empty hand. In Age1 - you get a normal workbench again and it ceases to be an issue.

When tanning leather, I paddle a raft out into the ocean/river (where water is infinite) and then craft them in inventory. But I have had the issue with accidentally placing stuff in a grinder or grill that it won't grind/cook and then having to break those. I've had similar issues with backing up an automated (horse powered) grinder with flowers that didn't have recipes to grind into dyes. In that case, I had to break the primitive hopper since I couldn't access its inventory.

All of this is associated with PrimalTech and its supposed to be somewhat inconvenient so that the normal stuff is an upgrade when you get it. I really appreciate getting normal chests and workbench in Age 1. I can't wait to get normal hoppers.

FWIW - there is a Reddit thread for Sevtech that has a public Google doc that is a compilation of tips and tricks for SevTech.

I tried SevTech a few weeks ago, but it was a little too much for me. I think I like the early stages of Minecraft games to be a little faster paced to get established quickly, before opening up to an assortment of higher end mods to explore.

The past few weeks I've been slowly plodding along in a solo SkyFactory 3 game and having a ball. Spent last night looking for nether quartz chickens and setting up a Refined Storage system, and boy, that mod is amazing. I'm not sure I'll be able to play Minecraft again without Refined Storage or Applied Energistics I love them so much. Just a really fun, elegant way to do mass storage in Minecraft.

My plan this weekend is to reorganize my automated production lines to be a little more organized, and then start pulling all those resources directly into my storage grid. After than I'm going to play around with RFTools and see if I can get another dimension working.